Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1887-05-27
THE EXTRAORDINARY IGNORANCE
OF MR.. WALLACE.

OF MR.. WALLACE.
The May number of Walace's Monthly
is almost Il painful Illustration of how
the march of time goes by an ordinary
compiler, leaving him far in the back
ground. There was time when Mr..
Wallace's dictum or information in re-
gard to the pedigree of the trotting horse
of America was worth something. or sup
posed to be. 1t would seem to have been
better than nothing, and when there was
nothing else it appeared to be better than
it was. Now the march of events is
crowding on, new researchers have APP
peared-some of very marked ability
such as Aurelius, Mr.. Parln, Mr. Ches-
ter. and others, and those pedigrees which
have Il foundation to rest on are being
verified and established. and those which
have not are being overthrown and de-
stroyed.
soon we will have a stud book that is
worth something, one whose statements
can be relied on and whose authority can
be safely followed by the breeder with
confidence. Hitherto undoubtedly many
breeders have made experiments based
upon false pedigrees and can understand
now why they resulted so disastrously.
The man who was taught to believe that
the beautiful. frictiOnlcsS and successful
Messenger dam. necessary to lengthen
his stride and give him the staying quail
ties which made up the successful trot-
ter, and who undertook to get another
Ethan Allen by following this recipe, can
now see into what Il pit he had fallen.
Ethan Allen was not got by any such
breeding. \ beautiful gray grand-daugh-
ter of Woodbury. Morgan, reared among
these animating and invigoratng Green
Mountains inNermont, travelling by chance
over the lake to the distant and retired
town of Hague, there, unllnowing and UNI
known, bred to the most illustriouS son of
another branch of the Morgan family,
which had also travelled from beyond the
Connecticut river to within sight of the
CLASSY waters of Lake Champaign, pro-
duced the favorte stallion trotter of the
American people.
The man. who may have sought from
far or near to get dam of the Harris
Hambletonian blood, so that he might
cross it with some of Ethan's descend
ants and produce another IIOtspur can
see, now, why he never had any success.
1t was a false pedigree that he followed.
No such trOtter had ever been produced
in any such way. The handsome and
wiry and long enduring and very success
full, and, for his day, very fast trotter,
Hotspur, was another product of the
Woodbury. Morgan dam crossed with the
Sherman Morgan sire. We might go on
indefinitely to show where the errors of
Mr.. Wallace's book misled, but that was
not the intent of our present article.
We took up recently Wallace's Month
ly for May. One would think by the
manner and statements of the editor that
he did not see the Middlebury REGISTER,
but this is not so. Mr.. Wallace's maya
zine has been on our exchange list for as
much, we think, as two years. 1t comes
to us for each month for what it is worth,
with more or less of error, and more
or less of value, and in its place the REG
lister goes each week with its exposures
of fraudulent and ignorant pedigrees, its
establishing of new ones, and its large
amount of information upon the horse of
America. 1t was certainly discouraging
to see how all this was thrown away, so
far as Mr.. Wallace was concerned. Ii
seems to be case of hopeless and perpet-
ual ignorance. Take, for instance, the ed
itoral headed "About Shanghai Mary"
This editorial states, after publishing an
interview with Mr.. Horton Wilcox in re-
gard to this mare, that ''never before has
the location been fixed upon, where the
trade Cfor this mare) took place between
Mr.. Wilcox and the young man." The
REGISTER published, some months since, a
letter written several years since by Mr..
Wilcox, stating, among other things, ex-
actly this; and this letter was quite ex-
tensively copied into the horse journals
of the country. We pass on to another
editorial headed, "What Horse was the
Sire of Ethan Allen" where Mr.. Wal
lace was engaged in beating around
narrow swamp that the world has gone
by long ago. Then comes the most extra
ordinary specimen of his ignorance of all,
and one that suggests senility settling